A Guy's Guide To Growing Up

Five Reasons to Stop Panicking About the Fate of the World

Sex-crazed teenagers, horrible diseases, and violent crime are all sold in the media as things that are pushing up the date of the end of the world. The apocalypse isn't coming -- at least not from these five over-dramatized reasons.

Every Friday, I’m compiling a list of five things that meet one criterion. “What is that criterion,” you ask? Well, it’s going to change every week and you’re just going to have to try and keep up.

This week…

Five Reasons to Stop Panicking About the Fate of the World

Bad things happen everyday. We know this.

The worst, however, is when more than one of those bad things are lumped together and then exaggerated in a context that suggests our world is ending.“Oh no, teenage girls like the Twilight movies and those movies feature pre-marital romance and those actor types all seem so narcissistic and Hollywood is only focused on adaptations/remakes rather than making original movies and all those fat cats on Wall Street are greedy monsters stealing from the little guy and my cell phone is going to kill me slowly — the world’s going to implode any day now!”.

Are any of these views justified? Sure – there’s a bit of truth in most criticisms, no matter how extremely they’re presented (and those Twilight flicks really do sensationalize outdoor, vampire softcore romance).

But it’s never as bad as anyone makes it seem (to be fair, nothing is ever as good as anyone makes it out to be, either) and there’s plenty of reasons why. The world isn’t ending any time soon and it certainly isn’t going to end as a result of the five misconceptions listed below.

5. A little sex never hurt anyone

One of the most common critiques of the growth of any media that features some semblance of pornography was that if we tolerated the “mainstreaming” of sexual content, it would wreck our society’s ethical values and lead to an increase of sexual crimes and everything related to sex. Guess what? Not happening.

I don’t know what else to say about this. The world isn’t as scary as we’re constantly led to believe, I guess.

3. No, seriously, like “velociraptor smart”

Movies like WALL-E and Idiocracy depict the future of our world as being full of media-obsessed, brainless, fat, lazy, simpletons. While these exaggerated portrayals are entertaining and there are certainly still plenty of dumb people in our world (watch any reality show on MTV for a nice taste of that inconvenient truth), IQ scores have been steadily rising in industrialized nations around the world for nearly 50 years.

Because I’m a bit of a moron, I will not try to dissect possible explanations of this trend (click here if you have that sort of time). That being said, most social scientists agree that while the rising scores are not entirely a result of human beings naturally becoming smarter, many of them – like Steven Johnson – do believe the overall progression of our mediated culture since the end of World War II has a lot to do with our advanced scoring on intelligence tests.

So ignore all those doomsday prophecies and the eye-rolls from your grandparents at Thanksgiving – our generation does have bright minds and they are just as common now as they were during The Oppenheimer Era.

2. The diseased tables have turned

It was not that long ago that a cancer diagnosis generally meant certain death. If you don’t believe me, go check out a movie or television show from the 1970s to see just how rarely the then-morbidly taboo topic is ever broached compared to now, when every other episode of every major network show (medically-centered or not) features a character battling cancer in some form.

Heart disease, which has been the biggest killer of human beings since the beginning of the last century, continues to claim over half-a-million American lives per year (25% of annual American deaths are heart disease-related) but the annual mortality rates for the disease have dwindled consistently since 1993. We’re winning! Keep positive!

1. The Holy Grail is within reach

The life expectancy for Americans, at birth, is now over 78 years old. The explanation for this increase is presumably pretty complex but I’ll go out on a limb and say it’s probably a result of one or more of the four things listed above; it’s easy to live longer when you’re able to out-think the dwindling number of criminals and/or diseases coming after you. I guess pornography also helps? Do some research and let me know how it works out for you.

Justin Brown is a writer and artist living in Virginia. He channels most of his mind's molten river of creativity into his blog Esteban Was Eaten!. For even more information about him, check out his website.

Regarding number 4, Freakonomics by Steven Leavitt and Stephen Dubner examines possible causes for this, and comes to the conclusion that the legalization of abortion in 1973 is responsible. It allowed for women who were more likely to have children that would become criminals to have safe abortions. 20 years later, when those would-be criminals would have been at their crime committing peak, the crime rates are down. If you haven’t read the book, its definitely a good one.
Cheers.
JNF

Jon,
I think there’s a place for being cute and cool in a men’s mag format, but this just seems way too cavalier. What do any of these things have to do with the end of the world? Is this article supposed to make me feel better because “the world’s not as bad off as we thought”?

Who out there is saying that these things are bringing the apocalypse? Saying that something is bad and that it will cause Armageddon are two different things. Making light of some very serious problems is hardly comforting. I hope indeed that there really is a decrease in crime, divorce, disease, etc. Personally I don’t know anybody who actually worries about the end of the world anyway.

How about a look into the claims of real-life doomsdayers like Global Warming advocates? More and more scientists are disagreeing with it. Who’s right? If Gore and other GW advocates are right, that will kill us a whole lot quicker than these other things anyway!

Overall I’ve enjoyed other stuff you’ve written; I just felt like sharing my opinion for a change. Thanks.

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